


The Gleaning

by Brennah_K



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:51:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brennah_K/pseuds/Brennah_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Albus and Severus had been more protective of Severus's potential role as a spy? What if Severus had never returned to Hogwarts as an instructor?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gleaning

"Harry ..." Albus began, watching the grieving boy's face most anxiously.

It had been a difficult year for both of them, with Albus's need to distance himself from Harry for both pragmatic and political reasons.

Even with his reasons explained and the prophecy revealed, Albus was certain that Harry had not overcome his feelings of betrayal.

“I had hoped to forestall this moment until your seventh year ... had hoped to give you some small chance of having a childhood.”

He ignored the small tight, bitter smile that appeared and faded swiftly from the child's pale lips, and continued, "I am afraid, instead, that I must ask a most difficult request of you: this summer..."

"The Dursley's! I know." Harry broke in with angry impatience, "I know. Did you think I wouldn't know? Did you really think I wouldn't realize that I'd have to go back there? That I couldn't ... couldn't go to grimmuald ... that Siri--" His voice broke abruptly.

"No, Harry. I am very much afraid that your aunt's rejection of you, after your cousin's traumatic encounter with the dementors, quite nullified the wards, as your uncle's -- regrettable reaction demonstrated."

Albus paused as an image of the child's battered form - drawn from Alastor's memory of retrieving the Harry from Privet Drive after the dementor attack - flickered through his mind and moved him to place his hand sympathetically over Harry's hand. It was only his decades of experience with emotional teenagers that enabled him to cover his wince when the child pulled his hand away with a rueful, eloquent grimace.

Albus suspected for a moment - from the swift expression of pensive guilt that flitted across Harry's face before his expression quickly shuttered - that the child was holding something back about that distant, dreadful summer night. He dismissed it a moment later, with the certainty that if Harry had not seen fit to confide in him in the months since... if the events and subsequent revelations of following the child's foray into the ministry's Hall of Mysteries had not completely destroyed Harry's trust in him - at the very least - they would have definitely damaged... (he glanced around his office at the debris of his former collection of ward monitors shattered and scattered across the floor)... very seriously damaged the child's willingness to confide in him in any meaningful manner.

"No, that which I must ask of you... is somewhat more urgent than simply securing your survival." He paused, hoping for Harry to acknowledge, at least, the point that his lodging with the Dursleys had been solely for the sake of his survival.  
The acknowledgment did not come during the long pause that Albus gave him to answer, so the headmaster finally continued, "As you must realize, after the facing Voldemort at the ministry, the dark lord has the ability to wrest control of your mind from you. Before you knew the contents of the prophecy, this was an incalculable risk, but one which we could not address under the nose of the ministry. Now, that he is aware of both the connection and his ability to use it to overcome your mind, and you are cognizant of the prophecy - we cannot risk the repeat of such an incursion."

Harry watched him with a silent gaze that seemed to understand, perhaps too well, the dangers that Allbus feared.

"It is imperative that you are able to guard your mind, Harry. To that end, I have called in a member of the order, who has been performing his duties to the order from within the very heart of the death eater's organization..."

"A spy!" Harry interrupted him again with a tone that might have been marginal approval, dry acknowledgment, or slight relief that the Headmaster had even prepared to that extent. 

/"Of course, the child knows nothing of the Order's current and ongoing preparations/," Albus thought to himself, /"It is only normal that he would not think of the extent that we've gone to - to protect him/."

"Quite." Dumbledore agreed, "It was he, who informed the order of your arrival at the ministry, and who, in doing so, may have revealed himself."

Albus failed to stifle the small regretful sigh that escaped him when Harry slumped further as the child took on yet one more ponderous burden of guilt on his already over-burdened shoulders.

"Thankfully, calling him in will allow us to both secure his safety and ensure that you have access to one of the most skilled, if diligently un-reknowned, occlumency masters in existence, who by the wit and wisdom of Merlin, also possesses masteries in the fields of Potions and Defense, as well as significant skills in spell-creation, healing, transfiguration, logic, strategy, and runes..." Albus paused as Harry's expression grew calculating, then shuttered again.

"I ... see." Harry responded slowly, "This is isn't just for the summer is it?"

His voice was resigned, but Albus was too very familiar with the various manifestations of pain in Harry's eyes - not to recognize heartbreak when he saw it.

"No, Harry, it is not. You have done wonderful things here at Hogwarts and saved both the school and its residents much so very much grief; I am truly sorry to ask you to leave it now, but I fear that is all too obvious that I can no longer protect you here..."

"I get it," Harry nodded, "and you don't have to say it: as long as I'm a target - everyone around me is going to be in danger, too."

Albus couldn't deny the truth of his statement, but it saddened him that Harry was so quick to provide him with a viable and reasonable ulterior motive for his request - as if Harry truly believed that his own safety was nothing more than a weak justification.

"Harry," Albus coaxed.

"No." The child answered firmly. "Headmaster, don't. I'll do it... and I'll do it more willingly if I'm left with the illusion that you didn't talk me into it. The illusion that I have, at least, even a small say in my future."

The headmaster closed his mouth and nodded. Although he truly did not feel that his past manipulations had controlled Harry's life to the extent the child's statement implied, Albus knew that it would not be wise to stir the child's anger further just before he was to meet his new instructor. That, in itself, promised to be quite fraught with tension, as it was.

"Thank you, Harry. Please understand, as soon as we can be certain that ..."

"Sir, you don't have to make me any promises. I understand that it won't be safe for anyone to have me around until ... it's over. What happens after that ..." he commented softly, with a shrug, "will happen. So, how am I to get there? A p-port key?"

"No," Albus answerd sympathetically, "the gentleman I am speaking of wishes to interview you before taking you into his confidence."

"Interview me? Is there a chance that he won't want to train me? Do I have to prove I'm strong enough, magically, to be worth training?" Harry asked with rising anxiety.

"Harry, you must understand: many of the skills you will be taught will require you to have unfettered access to each other's minds. It is very difficult training even between individuals with have established trust between themselves. Between incompatible personalities ... these lessons can be quite impossible."

Harry dropped his head into his hands with a growled sigh. He slid his fingers through his hair, tightened them, and drew his hands away - pulling his hair straight out from the sides until his scalp seemed to pull slightly, painfully away from his skull.

"Trust?" He laughed bitterly, letting his hair go with a tense chuff.

"Trust... yeah," he slapped his hands onto the arm rests of his chair and pushed himself restlessly out of his chair to stride past the headmaster's desk to the window kept customarily open for Fawkes.

He stared out, seeming to project his voice toward the distant Scottish peaks, "Okay... but you told him.... He knows about me, right?"

Albus intentionally misinterpreted Harry's question, understanding in a way that Harry could not - yet - understand the importance of the child's reaction: "When I requested Master Snape's assistance, I forwarded both your school records and your owl scores to him for evaluation. You have no need to worry; your scores are more than satisfactory."

"Hrrrgh, No! I. Know. You. Know. What. I. Meant! Did you tell him about me being a bloody werewolf?" Harry's voice sounded like ripping canvas as he spoke.

"Now, Harry, you needn't worry; Master's Snape's skills as a Potion master exceed even Professor Slughorn's; wolfsbane is easily within his capabilities."

"That wasn't the question," Harry accused, clutching the stone sill tightly, trying to control his growing temper. "The question was: did you tell him that I am a werewolf before he agreed to paint a bloody, bulls eye on himself, just by being near me... before he agreed give me 'unfettered' access to his mind - knowing that I have a fucking link with Voldemort in mind... before he agreed to hole up for an unknown length of time to teach me stuff that can't be taught without established trust, when you know (and I know you know it) that there's not person living I trust completely. Did you tell him that on top of all that, he'd be locking himself away with a bloody fucking werewolf that could rip his throat out while he was sleeping? (As if he could dare sleep knowing what I am.)"

"Harry, really, there is no need to exaggerate your anxiety forecasting worst case scenarios. You have had stable transformations for nearly two years. There is no reason to believe that - with a sufficient supply of wolfsbane, you will pose any greater danger risk than the average emotion-driven teen-aged witch or wizard."

Harry stiffly turned from staring out the window, stalked back to Albus's desk, laid his palms flat on the desk, pressed his weight into his palms, leaned his upper torso over the desk, and caught the headmaster's gaze with a flat, emotionless stare. Albus watched as Harry paused making a deliberate decision to say what he was about to, as his eyes shuttered and his expression flattened into a look that was bitterly cold when he finally spoke in an unfamiliar tone.

"Is that how you convinced Professor Lupin? By assuring him that decades of 'safe transformations' somehow protected him from screwing up and biting the first kid stupid enough to cross his path at the wrong time?"

Harry's voice grew more and more brittle as he continued, "or did you dangle my need for a protector, an adult that I could trust, an adult that I could confide in as bait to assuage his useless guilt for not playing a 'more significant' role in my life?"

Potter's harsh question had the tone of being quoted from a personal confidence, although Albus could not imagine Remus confessing his fairly obvious motives to Harry - even after when the child had woken, from his near-fatal mauling, to discover that he had been infected with the professor's curse. Nor would there have been time for such conversations later, for Harry had removed himself to the Chamber of Secrets to endure his first transformation without the benefit of wolfsbane, which would have had toxic properties when combined with the medicinal potions that they had been forced to give the child to treat his injuries.

Professor Lupin had retired himself to the shrieking shack, where the potion - that he would have gladly given Harry if he could have - had allowed him to keep his mind, and his guilt, even as the ionic, oxide, bromide, sulphide, and cyanide... silver salts... that he had liberally laced into through it none too gently relieved him of his life.

Perhaps, then, it was, Sirius who had shared his speculation with the child, though he must have known how Harry would have taken the suggestion to heart: another burden born, another guilt inassuageable. 

Albus, though, thought that unlikely. 

Sirius had seemed to care quite deeply for Harry - too deeply, it seemed, at times for the chary child to be comfortable with - seeming to vacillate between the belief that it was not him, but his father that Sirius cared for and his belief that it was only Sirius's guilt over Harry being turned into a werewolf by Lupin the night they had been trying to capture Peter Pettigrew that bound him to Harry: both were accusations - it was reported - that Harry had, in fact, shouted at Sirius, during Christmas break. 

What Sirius may have done to appease the teen's distrust, Albus could not say, but when Harry had returned in the spring, his anger had seemed moderately mollified. By Easter, they had seemed completely reconciled.

Fate might have been kinder, Albus thought, to allow the anger to linger so the child might not have reconciled himself with his godfather and become so attached to the all-too-soon deceased parental figure.

"I see." Harry commented far too mildly, interpreting the headmaster's silence as acknowledgment. "Tell him."

"Hmm?" Albus inquired, still slightly pre-occupied with his speculation.

"Tell Master Snape what I am, before he comes for the interview, and let him decide. No pressure either."

"Now, Harry - -"

"No. Pressure. At. All. Do you understand me? I don't care whether he was another of my father's much lamenting friends, a Weasley twice-removed, or one of Lockhart's gushing fans that you have somehow lured away from the prat. Tell him that I'm a werewolf, that people tend to die -very quickly - around me, and that he doesn't stand a hope in Hades of relighting the few remaining ashes of trust that I've left. They're burnt beyond rekindling. Then... only then .. let him decide. I know how much this means to the order - how bloody important it is, and I'll do it if he **knowingly** agrees; but, if he doesn't..."

"Harry," Albus coaxed with a soft, pride-filled smile at the boy's nobility.

"If he doesn't, Headmaster, I WILL NOT go with him - regardless of the your most well meaning attempts at manipulation and subtle coercion. You'll find that your sly guilt won't sway me this time - I've too much of it, already, from doing what you've asked and more from what you never had the grace or gall to ask. Do you understand me? Let him decide, and then, if he wants the interview, then, I'll be a good little boy and cooperate."

Before Albus could object to Harry's stubborn declaration, a presence whom Albus had completely, if momentarily, forgotten was present, made itself known.

"I expect to hold you to that , Mr. Potter;" Occlumency Master, Severus Romulus Snape intoned smoothly, "although, given the diction and content of many of the statements that you have made in the past hour, perhaps, a 'good. little. boy.' is not quite an accurate description. Certainly, your common language would not portray you as such; however, given the context in which your statements were made, this one time, I will see fit to overlook this one occurrence as an anomaly."

Albus smiled softly, pleased at the blush that quickly lit Harry's cheeks. He hadn't been certain that Harry had retained even that little bit of innocence.

"I will forewarn you, however, Mr. Potter that the language by which you are to address me throughout your training will -AT ALL TIMES- be circumspect, courteous, and well-considered. Do **you** understand, **me**?"

"My training?" Harry asked softly, "I thought that there was to be an interview."

"Indeed, there was, Mr. Potter." Master Snape agreed, mildly, "but that in no way implies that I would be the single or primary individual askinq questions or illiciting responses."

ブレンキン

"/To his credit/," Severus Snape thought, "/Potter wastes no time whinging and spluttering his outrage at being eavesdropped on, nor insists on demanding the obvious answers to the inane questions I would expect to hear from a hapless Gryffindor, or particularly witless child."/

Severus held his gaze on Potter, appraisingly, swiftly revising, then discarding the character study that he had constructed from surreptitiously gathered reports of the boy's disposition and skills - incautiously dropped over a score of order meetings. He allowed himself a brief smug acknowledgment of the fact that the late menace, Sirius Black's effusive reports had been furthest from the mark.

Potter, the junior, was not the to-spit-on image of his departed father. Aside from a matted growth of ebony curls that favored the whomping willow in their untamed state, Potter bore almost no resemblance to his father.

James Potter had, to Severus's eternal disgust, possessed the sort of appearance that made one wonder whether Michelangelo took a hand in its sculpting - only to have his artistry wasted on the callow, self-centered soul packaged within. James Potter's physique had been just that - a physique - rivaling Michelangelo's /David/ or Rodin's /Age of Bronze/.

By contrast, Potter, the junior, possesses no trace of his father's comely, seemly, seamless joining of muscle to bone and limb to torso; he instead appears more an arthritic construct of gangling limbs; disjointed joints; bones that have pulled and popped and torqued and warped under two year's endurance of lycanthropy's monthly changes; and muscles made stringy by regular tearing and stretching and rapid - unnaturally rapid - regrowth.

The thin framed glasses that make his astigmatic or myopic gaze seem more open and shining are, without recourse, common, cheap, and barely functional - to judge from Potter's near squint. His robes likewise bear no resemblance to the latest high wizarding fashions but seemed more what might have been drug out of the house's lost and found bin. No, Potter had merely a superficial stamp of Potter, the senior's appearance.

Nor did the boy seem tainted with his sire's repulsive arrogance. Potter, the junior, without question was demanding, temperamental, and impertinent; yet, the context of his demands were not irredeemably self-centered - focusing instead on attempting to guarantee that Severus was not deprived of critical and relevant information to his decision. That symptom of an un-presumed, un-bargained for, and unqualified desire for equity... was a symptom that Potter, the senior, never found himself afflicted by, to Severus's recollection.

Lily Evan's stamp was far less noticeable than Potter's, on their son. Her physical manifestation, so remarked upon by Molly Weasley - vibrant, verdant, apothecary glass, green eyes - were almost indiscernible, muted by the amber glow of his strenuously suppressed anger. In that, perhaps, he proved himself to be his mother's son, for Lily was possessed of a most unforgiving anger that, once invoked, disavowed all relation and forbearance and could not be mitigated as both Severus and Petunia, Lily's sister, learned to their detriment.

"/Her defiance, too/," he thought, "/firms the boy's chin, and permits him to challenge both Voldemort and Dumbledore.."/ who in Severus's memory, had never tolerated a challenge from any quarter, quite so benignly.

"Very well, Mr. Potter, as it seems that you are not hampered by your house's addiction to histrionics and inane questions, I can permit you seventeen additional minutes to gather sufficient clothing and accoutrement to maintain yourself for a period approximating two weeks: a trial period, if you will, to discern whether two individuals, self-acknowledged to be incapable of trusting others, may by some unfathomable circumstance manufacture a means to transmit the necessary  
skills and information without requisite expressions of trust."

"Will I need my textbooks?" Potter asked rather reasonably.

"No, I should think not. Perhaps, if, counter to both our expectations, we discover an unexpected method to simulate trust ... you may, of course, at a later date, send for them to augment any other studies that you wish to apply yourself to - if, by some remote chance, you find my library on the subject lacking."

"Then, I won't need to take up all seventeen of those minutes," Potter commented dryly, drawing his wand and summoning his 'surv - - traveling pack', which dropped into his outstretched palms barely two minutes later.

"Turn out your pack, Mr. Potter." Severus ordered, rather curious why the boy had aborted calling the battered auror's pack a 'survival' pack unless the title hit rather too close to the mark ... too revealing to be comfortable to the boy.

Potter, he suspected, had guessed at his curiosity, but shrugged and complied, pulling out seven tightly rolled and belt-strap secured rolls that he laid out on the Headmaster's desk as Dumbledore leaned forward curiously. Tapping each one, in turn, Potter murmured, "jeans", "t's", "smalls", "robes", "bedrolls", "socks", and "... er..." He trailed off, surreptitiously focusing on the next items to be pulled out of his pack - as if he had finished his recitation.

"Mr. Potter?"

"... potions," Potter supplied softly, refusing to play dumb, much to Severus's approval.

"Unroll it," Severus ordered softly, suspecting that the boy's hesitation had confirmed his growing suspicion.

Nodding, Potter grimaced, slid his index finger under a thin rope belt, and untied it with a swift practiced pull. With a very careful, very practiced, smooth, one-handed slide of fingers, Potter slowly unrolled a thick, worn, gray t-shirt with potion vials slipped through thin parallel slits, intentionally cut into the shirts face, to hold the potions in place.

Severus arched his eyebrow, studying a potion kit that was very nearly as complete as his own... barring, of course, the potion used to treat cruciat-- no, there it was down at the bottom left of the tee, but only one small bottle there. Only one bottle compared to the numerous vials of pain relievers, fever reducers, bruise remedies, healing salves, blood replenishers, and even internal organ rejuvenation potions. Only one bottle of a treatment for magical abuse and so many for the treatment of ... muggle abuse.

Deciding to preserve the boy's dignity, for now, Severus replaced Potter's pale hold on the roll and began to reverse its course until Albus laid a flat hand in the center of the remaining - unrolled area.

"Harry, I - I find I must ask, 'why... why do you have such a collection of potions and salves?" The headmaster's voice was warm and grandfatherly, but its warmth did not seem to affect Potter in the slightest.

"It doesn't matter."

"Quite to the contrary , My Dear Boy," Dumbledore rose behind his desk and reached over to cup Potter's chin in his hand - gently forcing it to lift. "It matters a very great deal."

Potter appeared unmoved, even by the gentle touch, "It never has before."

Severus was almost startled at how condemning and unforgiving the boy's mild, uninflected statement seemed. Perhaps, Potter carried more of his mother than Severus had first assumed.

The Headmaster's hand dropped, and he had nothing further to say to either Severus or Harry until just before Severus grasped the floo powder from the ornate stone cone hanging at the headmaster's hearth.

"Goodbye, My Dear Boys, I look forward to seeing you soon. There is much we have to discuss - when we can be certain that it is safe to do so."

ブレンキン

"Potter, it is time to depart," Master Snape reminded Harry, even though Harry was certain that his Occlumency... Defense... Potions ... heck... his /just about everything he studied/... Master had been completely aware of every step of his approach and retreat from Headmaster Dumbledore's tomb - watching him even though he was invested in a tense conversation with Deputy Headmistress McGonagall.

Master Snape always watched. Everything. Everything, at all hours, day or night: a fact that had quite nearly driven Harry mad the first rocky weeks of his training.

There had been times, over his years at Hogwarts, Harry had questioned whether he had a tendency towards paranoia, but it was somewhat difficult to tell whether you were irrational about being watched when the entire school suspected you of being a dark lord, or thought that you were being hunted by a raving escaped convict, or thought that you had cheated to get into a bloody tournament that you wanted nothing to do with, or the news papers were painting you as insane and some of your year mates and classmates and dorm mates wondered if they were right.

How could you tell if you were irrationally feeling like you were being watched even when you weren't - when you couldn't ever tell if there was a time when you weren't being watched?

That question had been answered with certainty and finality before even the end of the first day, because in no uncertain terms, knowing for certain that he was being watched, and of course he would be; his new instructor was a spy (who would be in their right minds to believe that a spy wouldn't watch you in their own home), but even knowing this - Harry could not argue that he was being completely irrational in the intensity of his response to being watched.

Harry, under Master Snape's constant scrutiny has practically collapsed, trembling and twitching with nerves and suppressed tension, grief, anger, and other lingering emotions that had been left unaddressed after his interview with Headmaster Dumbledore. When he had finally spun on Master Snape, hands clinched, teeth gritted, lips warping between a snarl and teeth-bared silent threat that he quite realized was inappropriate even as he made it - he'd had to fight to press his lips into a thin McGonnagall-like line.

"Would you please..." Harry remembers asking in a tight near-pleading tone, "look somewhere else, at something else, anything else, for even just a second? Even just a bleeding second?"

"No, Mr. Potter, I will not." Master Snape had refused unequivocally. "It is not my gaze that you are currently allowing yourself to succumb to, and I will not allow you to impede your training with such an illusion before we have even begun."

How Harry had kept from screaming - Harry still isn't sure, even almost two months later, but thinks that it was probably because he had known that, at that time, he hadn't known Snape well enough to know how he'd react, and he hadn't been on home territory anymore, and a host of other reasons likely as well, but he hadn't screamed. He hadn't cursed. He hadn't even slammed down the stack of occlumency books that Master Snape had given him only moments before to begin his evening studies.

Instead, he had chewed the inside of his cheek. Took a deep breath. Nodded. Clenched his fists. Released his fists. Sighed harshly. And... tried most unsuccessfully... to appear as if he were ignoring that every ounce of his reaction was being observed in the minutest detail. When the Potion Master handed him a teacup filled with Darjeeling that was so heavily laced with calming draught it appeared muddy, he did not comment on the obvious necessity (What good would it do?), but accepted the cup and murmured thank you.

ブレンキン

That moment had been quite a foreshadowing for the remaining two weeks of their trial period - and their weeks of training after that. Master Snape did not acquiesce to what he considered or termed as 'needless coddling'. He was neither particularly nice, nor mean. He was blunt. In Harry's face. Completely unabashed and unrepentant for any discomfort, anxiety, or embarrassment that his actions or words caused Harry. He allowed Harry no illusions, no false comforts, and never - under any circumstance- offered Harry false praise. He neither asked for Harry's trust nor gave his own - unconditionally - to Harry, but neither did he ignore Harry's responses and reactions.

He was always the model of silent unequivocal acceptance whether of Harry's frustration, resentment, disappointment, anger, loss; it did not matter what. He stood or sat, completely silent, watching - always watching - and listening - always listening as well - to whatever Harry said, without judgment, or at least without giving any visible sign of judgment, and only commented when Harry asked him directly for comment and only on the specific topic that Harry had questioned him about.

He did not pry.

He did not assume.

He did not ask, and yet, Harry had found himself telling Master Snape - everything.

No one knew everything about him, or at least no one else did: not Hermione, not Neville, certainly not Draco, or any other member of Potion Master Slughorn's 'Slug club' that he had been inducted into first year. He thought Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw who'd been inducted into the Slug club, a year later, might have some ideas - about Harry, but she had 'some ideas' about every thing - and for 'some ideas' read 'some very odd ideas', and Harry couldn't really tell what she knew and what she didn't. If the Professors couldn't, how could he be expected to.

Harry suspected, though, that between what he had told Master Snape, and what the spy's ever-watching eyes had observed, Master Snape knew everything about him. The thought made him just a little nervous, at times... times when he almost wished Master Snape would judge him, or at least give a hint of doing so (other than the on and off lacing of calming draught in his Darjeeling) - so that Harry could finally decide whether he trusted the wizard or not, because Harry suspected that was what was keeping him from trusting Master Snape completely - the only thing that was, and that worried Harry a little, too. But, as Master Snape seemed to have no intent to give him that relief, if it would have been a relief, Harry had resolved to go on as they had been: quite successfully.

It seemed that little bit of distrust had not been an obstacle to his training. Quite the opposite, in fact, as Harry found it easier to build shields around his thoughts because the thought of Master Snape seeing everything that he was - all his fears, all his memories, all his failures - and silently judging him on them - was abhorrent to Harry. Harry's skills in dueling and defense also thrived under the distrust; he fought and dueled and shielded as if he were in a true duel every time, and he improved to the point that he had even managed to disarm the Headmaster when Dumbledore stopped by to check on his progress.

The Headmaster had seemed almost inappropriately pleased as he retrieved his wand - almost dancing with excitement - to the extent that Master Snape had rolled his eyes, even knowing that Harry would notice him doing so. That had been less than two weeks ago, and Harry could hardly credit the note that Hedwig had delivered that morning - reporting the Headmaster's sudden demise. How could someone that had been dancing like a first year on a sugar high, in the space of a week, be dead? 

Harry didn't let himself dwell on that thought; though, there were too many others like that would be woken back up if he did.

ブレンキン

"He wished you to have this." Master Snape comments, pausing as they prepared to apparate, handing Harry the Headmaster's wand. "Minerva stated that he had said it was 'rightfully' yours now. She also gave me a small collection of penseive vials that she believes he wished you to see. Perhaps, they will explain what possessed the old fool to place a cursed ring on his finger."

Master Snape doesn't ask Harry for permission to view the vials, nor does he hand them to Harry as Harry finishes securing the Headmaster's ornate wand in the modified wrist holster. Harry doesn't ask for the vials, either. They both know, without asking, or telling, that Harry will receive them on arrival, that he will view them, that Master Snape will as well, and that they will discuss the matter in some manner or other. It doesn't need to be said.

It's not quite trust. At least, Harry doesn't think either of them would call it trust. This was simply how they worked together. Harry doesn't have to trust Master Snape, to know that he will be there - even when Harry finally prepares to face Voldemort. Master Snape does not have to trust Harry to recognize that Harry will accept his guidance - even after they've faced Voldemort. It was simply a fact. Knowledge. Nothing more. Nothing less. And, they were quite content with that.

Finite.

**Author's Note:**

> */"Gleaning/* /is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system" (wikipedia)./


End file.
